The Innocent: Chapter 9 (Patreon)

Index

Chapter 9

Camille

The bell for the end of fourth period rang, and because nobody was letting me be alone and Luna had a research project to work on, I was going to be spending the next few hours with Abby. We were supposed to meet in the courtyard at the middle of all the education buildings, so I headed that direction the moment I left class. I could see her on the opposite end of the snowy terrace when I got there, but I stopped at the beverage cart to buy two cups of coffee before crossing over to where she was sitting.

“Hey,” I said, dropping down next to her because it was the only spot of bench on the round table that didn’t have snow on it. She passed me the same nervous smile she had that morning before not looking at me for the entirety of first period, and then her hazel eyes wandered to the second cup I’d set down. I pushed it toward her. “I bought you coffee.”

A slight crease formed between her eyebrows as she eyed the cup in confusion. “You… bought me coffee?”

“Yeah,” I answered, and she kind of just stared at me, waiting for an explanation or context or something to let her know why when I’d never done it before. “Um.” I chewed the inside of my lip. I hadn’t felt this awkward with her since we first started talking, and it seemed mutual, but I couldn’t spend the day with her without clearing the air. “Okay, we haven’t talked all weekend, and I kind of got the feeling like you were avoiding me in history this morning. Maybe because you think I’m upset about what happened in the gym the other night, but I’m not, so,” I gestured to the drink, “coffee.”

The crease between her eyebrows deepened as she glanced between the drink and me. After a while, she laughed, sounding somewhat relieved. “Let me get this straight,” she said, “what happened at the gym… happens… and you bring me a peace offering?”

“I mean, it’s not really a peace offering,” I said, my cheeks tinting with a self-conscious heat, which only made Abby’s smile grow a little wider. “I just didn’t want things to be awkward because we’re friends now,” her lips pursed to try and contain a grin, “and what happened wasn’t really your fault and I know that and stop laughing, don’t make me regret this.”

“I’m sorry,” she chuckled, briefly grabbing my shoulder with both hands in amused apology. “I’m sorry, it’s just that when you do stuff like this it’s hard to believe I was ever afraid of you, you’re such a-” My glare cut her off because I knew exactly what she was about to say. Softie. Or marshmallow. She’d probably heard Kyla say it about me, and she snickered and then cleared her throat, saying as seriously as she could, “Never mind.” I rolled my eyes, and a few silent moments passed while she pulled the drink in front of her, clutching it in her hands to soak in the heat. “Thank you, though,” she said, smile gone and in the most genuine way. “It means a lot that you did this. I was too scared to bring it up.”

I nodded, tilting my cup to my lips and noticing how Abby hadn’t taken a drink of hers yet. At that thought, she glanced at me out of the side of her eye, but didn’t say anything and still didn’t take a drink. Maybe it was too hot, but an entire minute passed while she kept looking at me, growing more awkward by the second and just clutching the cup in her hands without taking a sip to try it out.

“You don’t like coffee,” I realized.

“I don’t,” she admitted with a severe wince. “Sorry. I wish I did because this was super sweet of you. I appreciate the gesture, though, I really do.”

“It’s okay,” I said, laughing, “don’t worry about it.” I took her drink and pulled the lid off of both, refilling my cup with hers before tossing her coffee into the nearest trash bin. “What do you like? So I know.”

“Tea,” she answered, “most kinds.” She watched me fit the lid back onto my drink while she said, “I was thinking of going to the Council office to keep digging through archives. Do you want to come?”

They weren’t letting me go anywhere alone... “Do I have much of a choice?”

“We could do something else.”

“Am I allowed to be there?” I asked. She gave a nonchalant shake of the head. “Will your dad get mad if he sees me?”

She hummed in consideration. “Yeah, most likely.”

“Okay,” I agreed. She didn’t say anything as she rose from her seat and threw her backpack over her shoulders, but the smirk on her face was approval enough. I got up to follow her across campus to the dorms where she’d parked her car, and we walked for a minute in silence before I asked, “How was your date, anyway?”

“It was alright,” she answered.

I waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t, asked, “That’s it? It was alright?”

“Yeah… We had fun, and I always like going to The Orchid. I don’t know, he wasn’t really what I’m looking for.”

He? I did an involuntary double take at her because that wasn’t what I expected, and when she laughed at my thoughts, or my reaction, I was too embarrassed to look at her again. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“It’s fine,” she said, and clarified, “I’m pansexual.” I opened my mouth to tell her I didn’t know what that meant, but she explained before I could ask. “I can be attracted to people regardless of sex or gender.”

“Oh, okay.” We reached the parking lot and her car, and while she dumped her backpack into the trunk, I asked, “So what are you looking for? If he wasn’t it.”

For a few seconds, while she wandered to the driver’s side and I stepped up to the passenger door, I half-expected her to say Kyla. “You know,” she sighed eventually, setting her forearms on the roof and looking across at me, “sometimes I’m not so sure anymore.”

I didn’t know exactly what to say to that, or where else to look except at her for the long span of moments we both just stood there. Then she pulled open her door, and as I did the same and climbed into the passenger seat, I finally thought of something. “You know what Luna would say?” I asked, and Abby hummed curiously as she pulled out of the parking spot. “She’d say you’ll figure it out, and the date was a waste if you at least didn’t get laid.”

 “That does sound like something she’d say,” she laughed. She paused to check for traffic while pulling onto the main road. “There’s nothing wrong with that philosophy,” she added, “but I’ve never really been interested in sex unless there’s emotion involved.” I couldn’t help that it made me wonder about what Luna had asked me. About if Abby and Kyla ever- “No,” Abby blurted, reacting to my thoughts even if she was trying not to. “No, no, we never… I mean we kissed, but even then, she was really thinking about you, so it actually felt more like I was kissing you and-” She stopped short, and I didn’t have to look over to feel the heat rushing to her face. Or maybe that was heat rushing to my face… “Can we please talk about something else?”

“Yeah, that’s good, okay.” But neither of us said anything. We sat there in a silence so tense and awkward that the air felt thick in my throat, and I desperately wished she didn’t have a direct line to my thoughts, because I was trying so hard not to think about it. About her kissing Kyla, or kissing me, or the intimacy they might’ve had and how it compared to what Kyla and I had, or if Kyla would’ve thought of me while they were intimate and-

“Oh my god, Camille, please.”

This was as awkward and frustrating for me as it was for her, and I held out my hands defensively. “What else do you expect me to think about?”

“Literally anything else,” she pleaded.

I didn’t know what else to do, or if it would even help, but I turned on the radio and blasted the volume. Even if she could still hear my thoughts, at least it would help me focus on something else until I managed to stop thinking about that. But maybe she really couldn’t hear my thoughts with the music that loud, because out of the corner of my eye I could see her chest heave with a sigh, and most of the discomfort between us melted away after another minute. In my effort to think about something else, my thoughts took me somewhere I hadn’t expected, and then I started thinking about that instead, and it prompted me to turn the music down.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked, and she nodded. “Kyla gets really distant sometimes, and it puts this… this bad feeling in my stomach because it’s what she’s feeling. Do you know why?”

There was a pause, and then she asked on a clipped breath, "Why are you asking me?"

“Because, well,” I glanced sideways, but she wasn’t looking at me. “You hear things, and she trusts you and I guess I was wondering if you knew… if there was something to know.”

She didn’t say anything for a long span of seconds, but her throat bobbed and her hand tightened on the steering wheel. “This isn’t a conversation we should be having,” she said eventually, but her hand loosened so one finger could tap against the wheel, and her jaw clenched. “Actually, we’re going to have this conversation because you just frustrated the hell out of me.”

I’d never been so instantly confused. “What? How?”

“I’m about to be really blunt,” she said, “but I mean no offense, okay?”

“Okay…”

“For being able to literally feel each other’s emotions,” she said, “your communication can be shit.”

I did take some offense. “Our communication is not that bad.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “The only reason I even stood a chance with Kyla last semester is because you guys couldn’t have one simple conversation about what happened. And you’re still not talking about it. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to watch you two sometimes, feeling the way I do? You have something amazing- no, legendary, so stop bullshitting around your problems and talk. I’ve been in people’s heads my whole life and I can tell you right now that love is not enough. If you want to know why she gets distant, if you want to know what happened, ask her.”

All I could really do was sit there and stare out the windshield as all of that sank in. It took a while before either of us spoke again, and then Abby said, “I’m sorry if that was harsh.”

“No, it’s,” I cleared my throat, trying to rid the shame because I shouldn’t have asked her that question in the first place, “it’s okay.”

We pulled into the parking lot outside the Council office, and she put the car in park and turned off the engine. “It’s just,” she paused and let out a heavy sigh, “I won’t dance around my feelings for Kyla, we all know they’re there… but regardless of how I feel, I haven’t stuck around in hopes that you and her wouldn’t work out. She loves you so much, and I know she wants to have that talk with you, but you’re both too scared that sometimes talking hurts.”

"I'm sorry I asked," I told her, setting my elbow on the windowpane to rest my head in my hand. “That wasn’t fair to you.”

“You’re concerned,” she said, shrugging, “I get it, and I actually appreciate you trying to confide in me.”

“I don’t know what happened,” I admitted. “We used to talk pretty well, but then I Changed her and didn’t tell her it was me, and we weren’t together for a while, and now I just don’t understand. I’ve tried asking her, but she always just says she’s fine and I’m too scared of how resistant she’s been to really ask.”

“You have to,” Abby said. “Don’t ask her if she’s okay. Ask her why she’s not.”

I nodded. “Thanks for the advice.”

She offered a smile, repeating, “I haven’t stuck around hoping you guys wouldn’t work out.” I wondered why she had stuck around, and though I wasn’t going to ask, she said, “Kyla’s the kind of friend I don’t want to lose, even if that’s all she’ll ever be.” She shrugged and added, “And I guess you’re sort of growing on me too.” My lips pulled into a smile, and she rolled her eyes and muttered, “Marshmallow,” as she got out of the car.

I got out and followed her to the small office building and through the door. There was a reception desk left of the entrance, a large secluded office to the right, and a floor of half-height cubicles spanning out ahead. A couple of people greeted Abby when we walked in, and I tried to ignore the curious glances and the few glares directed at me as she led the way. We strode to the line of cubicles directly across from the secluded office’s windows, to the nook with Abby’s name on it.

“You have your own desk and everything,” I said. “Fancy.” I leaned against the edge of her desk while she hurried to the next cubicle over, rolling back an extra chair. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a room at the very back of the office. It was shielded with one-way glass so I couldn’t see inside, and the door was a heavy security door with key-card entry.

“That’s the arms room,” Abby answered.

“You keep weapons here?”

She hummed an affirmative. “Field ops get their briefings and weapons here before missions.”

“Oh.” I reached for a three-ring binder beside her computer and opened it. “What’s this?” It looked like some sort of journal.

“Case log,” she answered, grabbing it before I could read anything and moving it to the opposite side where I couldn’t reach. “Nothing in there about this case that you don’t already know.” She gestured almost pleadingly to the extra seat, like I was asking too many questions, so we both sat down in our chairs and scooted in. While she booted up her computer, she glanced to the side at the overlooking office, squinting as if to peer through the closed blinds.

There was a small line of books against the short wall on her desk, so I fingered the spines as I read the titles, picking out the one we’d found in Patrick’s room. I set it on the desk in front of me and flipped it open to a random page. “Geshehan gildaeht,” I read in a stumble. “How badly did I butcher saying that?”

“Not too bad,” Abby laughed, typing in her password. “It means ‘to provide gold wealth.’ It’s a riches spell.”

Boring, and not helpful. I flipped to another random page, but most of it was scribbled in writing similar to what was on Devon’s skin and that I couldn’t read. Since Abby’s computer had started up, she clicked an app that opened the Council’s databases. “What are you going to search for now?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I was just going to search what I already have a million times and hope I get different results.”

"Which is?”

“Occult suicide to start,” she said. “Revenge spells, summoning, and casting, cross-references of every variation of those things. I even searched ghosts just to humor Luna.”

I laughed, but before I could say anything, someone came out of that office and around the corner to the rest of the cubicles. It was Abby’s dad. He scanned over our heads to look for someone, but as he took a step, his gaze dropped to us. He noticed Abby, and then me, and his eyes darkened as recognition dawned. He wasn’t happy about me being here – if it wasn’t the irritation on his face then it was the disgust in the pursing of his lips, but instead of saying anything, he continued in the direction he’d started. He walked over to another Council employee within our line of sight, tossing suspicious glares my direction every few seconds.

“You were not joking about him getting mad,” I whispered.

Abby had had her head down ever since he walked out, but she peered over the top of her computer screen at the same moment he scowled at me again. “He’s probably not happy about the amount of space between us either.”

I looked at her shoulder. “There’s like a foot and a half of space between us.”

“Any less than ten is too little,” she muttered, typing a revenge search into the database. “He’d prefer we didn’t talk at all.” I scooted my chair sideways, narrowing that foot and a half of space to less than an inch and causing Abby’s head to whip my direction. “So you get closer?”

“Your dad can bite me.” I tossed my arm over the back of her seat, leaning into the computer screen like it would help me see better. At the same time I noticed Abby’s lips thin to hold back a smile, I also noticed how her father’s face contorted as he looked over again. “What’s he thinking about my contagious werewolf germs now?”

“I actually don’t know,” she admitted. “He found a way to keep me out of his head and I can’t read him anymore.” She stared his direction for a few seconds before snickering, “But he looks pissed.”

I laughed a little, but gestured to the screen with my free hand. “I have a new theory for you.” She hummed curiously and looked over at me, and wow, maybe I was a little too close… I leaned back in my seat. “What if Patrick found out about whatever kind of supernatural Constance is, and he really is possessing her? Not in a ghost way, but in a ‘he transferred his consciousness before death’ kind of way.”

"That's an interesting theory," she mused, and typed in a new search. “As wild as Luna’s suggestions are, possession isn’t a bad guess considering we can’t find an actual connection between Constance and what happened with the Prevost brothers and Devon Nealy.”

She began scrolling through the previews of various sources that had popped up in her search. To kill the minute it would take her to find something, I flipped to another random page of the book we’d found in Patrick’s room. I read the title and the first sentence in my head at least a handful of times before attempting to read it out loud.

“Deof nos Neadwoz,” I read haltingly, “sum deof geclipand purh morwo– this language is a mouthful; how does anyone ever get any magic done?”

“Deof,” said a deep voice from behind us, and Abby and I wheeled around to look at her father because we hadn’t noticed him coming. “Demon of inevitable punishment,” his eyebrows were converged with irritation, “a demon summoned through an act of murder.”

I reached behind me to close the book, partly because that didn’t apply to our case – Patrick had killed himself, not someone else – and partly because I had the feeling I might get murdered should I so much as glance at another Council resource.

"Abby," he said gruffly, “I want to see you in my office.”

“Okay,” she gestured at the computer, “give me one minute, we’re-”

“Now.”

He paced off and around the corner to where the door of his office was. Abby sighed, turning to shut her computer down. “Looks like the fun’s over.” We stood, and I followed her to the front where we stopped between the door to her father’s office and the exit. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

She trudged to his office and closed the door behind her so that she disappeared, leaving me standing there by myself. There was nowhere to sit and wait near the entrance of the Council headquarters, and I could feel a few pairs of eyes on me just as there had been when we first walked in, so I settled for leaning back against the wall and pretending I wasn’t being watched. I couldn’t hear much more than muffled murmurs from Abby and her father for the first minute she was in there, but their volumes were steadily rising.

The first words I could make out were a growled, “How many more times do I have to tell you?”

"Why don't we try fifty?" Abby spat. "Because I obviously didn’t get it the first hundred.”

"I told you to stay away from them!" her dad shouted. "I tolerated you getting cozy with the mutt because your mother insisted it was harmless, but you will not start bringing animals into this office! Let alone the mutt’s bite-happy sire.” Okay, that stung a little.

“They have names!” Abby roared. “And you could have capable, loyal friends in the Pack if you weren’t too much of an asshole to acknowledge they’re human!”

“Subhuman!”

“Isn’t it the Council’s job to monitor the supernatural world?” Abby snarled. “The world they’re part of? And isn’t it my job as case lead to solve this case in the best way I know how?”

“Your job is to do what I tell you to do,” her dad snapped. “And I’m telling you that whatever foolish crush you have on the danger of them, it’s time to grow up. Stay away from them.”

Abby made an incoherent noise of frustration, threw the door of her father’s office open, and stomped over to grab my hand and haul me out the exit. She let me go the moment we were outside so she could pound across the parking lot to her car. She reached it before I did and set to pacing from end to end, swearing and mumbling furiously, stopping every few trips to kick at a tire. I came to a halt a couple of feet away and just stood there, still in shock about how quickly their argument had escalated and feeling more than partially responsible for it. I probably wouldn’t have agreed to go if I’d known it was going to be that bad. And if I’d known the kind of berating she had to endure just for spending time with us, I certainly wouldn’t have provoked him. I couldn’t even be mad at her father for calling Kyla a mutt, or for being such a jerk, because I felt too bad for how upset Abby was.

I let her stomp around for a solid minute before asking, “Are you okay?” She stopped, set her elbows against the roof of her car to bury her bright red face in her hands, took in a deep breath, and let it out in a rumbled sigh. All she did to answer was nod without taking her face out of her hands. “I, um,” I began, trying to think of how I could make her feel better, “I’m not much of a hugger, but… you can have one, if it’ll help…”

She straightened away from her car to look at me. “I’m sorry you had to hear the things he said.” And I realized that her face wasn’t red because of her anger. She was embarrassed. “More like mortified,” she corrected, giving an apologetic smile for responding to my thoughts. “I don’t even know what to say. I just hope you don’t think I even remotely feel the way he does about you.”

“I don’t,” I said. She just stood there, staring like she hadn’t heard me and was still trying to recover. “He called me bite-happy, huh?” She met my gaze, her eyebrows knitting with severe apology. “No, it’s totally fine,” I shrugged, “it’s just that I’m really more of a lapdog, so…”

She huffed as she tried to hold back a laugh, but a moment later she did laugh, and she practically fell forward to wrap her arms around my waist and get the hug I offered. I wasn’t exactly expecting it after she hadn’t taken me up on it right away, and I’d never hugged her before, so I was too stunned to return it for the first couple of seconds. I eventually recovered enough to curl my arms around her shoulders, and it lasted a bit longer before she pulled away.

“Thanks,” she said, looking far less upset than she had a minute before. “You and Kyla give the warmest hugs.”

“It’s the werewolf heat,” I suggested. She nodded, but I couldn’t help adding, “Or is it because you have a crush on how dangerous we are?”

“Shut up,” she snickered, striding around to the driver’s side of her car.

But I was enjoying too much how her face had brightened with a smile, so I teased, “Seduced by the peril of having such vicious, contagious friends.”

"Says the lapdog," she quipped. I laughed, climbing into the passenger’s seat and unable to come up with a retort. “You played yourself,” she chuckled.

“I guess I did,” I agreed.

She started the car and left the lot. Neither of us said anything for a little while, but I got the feeling that Abby was in a much better mood, and for the first time, the silence between us was comfortable. It actually seemed like we might even have a nice day in spite of her father, but then there was a loud clang from outside the front of her car. Both of us jumped so bad our butts left our seats. I don’t know if Abby had the same instinct I did, but I thought maybe Constance had been following us and we were being attacked. But then there was a consistent clunking from under the hood as the vehicle slowed.

“Come on, not again,” Abby groaned, pulling off onto the side of the highway. The car came to a complete stop, and she turned off the ignition and fell forward to drop her head against the steering wheel. “Why today, of all days? Am I being punished for my disobedience?”

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said.

“My dad won’t come pick us up after that fight,” she said without lifting her head. “And my mom’s all the way in the city so I’ll have to call a tow truck but that could take hours.”

“I’ll call Luna,” I said. I pulled out my cell phone and clicked her name, but it didn’t even ring once before prompting me to leave a message. “Straight to voicemail… she probably turned it off to study.” Kyla was still in class, and she’d been trying so hard lately to get good grades that we couldn’t ask her to leave early. Abby sighed heavily. “This happens often, huh?” She nodded. “Your dad seems like he could afford to get you a new car…”

She finally sat up only to lean her head back against the seat. “He offered on the condition that I stop associating with werewolves.” I inhaled a breath to ask a question, but I was so stunned by that that nothing came out. I never would’ve guessed the lengths she went to in order to spend time with us. To spend time with Kyla… “It’s not Kyla,” Abby said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, your girlfriend’s great, but I’d at least lie to my dad about it if she was the only reason.”

“Then why?”

“The principle of it.” She paused to let out another sigh. “He’s wrong about you. The way he thinks and acts isn’t okay and I won’t accept it, not ever.”

If Abby hadn’t already been changing my mind about her since the semester started, that would’ve done it. She had conviction. She was willing to sacrifice her relationship with her own father for something she believed in, for us, and my admiration for her soared. She knew it, too, and she refused to meet my gaze as her cheeks tinted darker in the new silence between us. That is, until she shivered. With the car off, the cold outside was seeping in, and her jacket wasn’t thick enough for staying idle.

“Tell you what,” I said, shrugging out of my own coat. “I’ll Change and run back to school to get the Jeep and come pick you up.”

She took the jacket I was handing to her with a grateful smile and pulled it on over her own, and then asked, “What about your clothes?”

“I keep spares in the car,” I answered, pulling my backpack off the floor and into my lap. “I’ll just hope no one’s around to see me before I can get dressed again.” She didn’t look entirely convinced, but as I reached into my bag to pull out my keys, my motivation evaporated too. “It’s gone…”

“No way,” Abby breathed, shifting and leaning across the center console to see into my hands. Lacey’s California-shaped keychain was missing, and it was clear that we both knew exactly what happened. It was my sentimental item. Somehow, sometime recent, Constance had taken it. Abby sat back in her seat as she said firmly, “You’re not leaving this car or my sight.” She reached into her pocket for her phone. “I’ll text Kyla to come get us when she’s out of class.”

I nodded, but my hand was suddenly trembling as I dropped my keys back into the bag. All of this, the magic and the murders and the threat to my life… it was getting too real. Too close. And none of us knew how to stop it.

<<< Chapter 8

Abby's Journal >>>

Chapter 10 >>>